An
elderly woman and her husband are treated for injuries inflicted by Serb
military forces as they fled Srebrenica in July 1995.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Ratko Mladic seems almost eager to fight all comers to the bitter end, says Nic Robertson
- Robertson: The women of Srebrenica occupy the moral high ground in this battle
- In Bosnia, the war is an awkward topic and a bane to the nation's future, he says
- Robertson: If justice isn't sufficient, then Bosnians will be hostage to their history
What the former Bosnian
Serb military commander hopes to gain and exactly what he is trying to
defend are unclear. He may be the only one who expects an outcome other
than guilty.
He seems almost eager to fight all comers to the bitter end.
The women of Srebrenica
are in the Hague too. All these years later, they stand before him, with
international justice on their side.
These women -- the
widows, mothers, victims of one of the worst atrocities since World War
II -- occupy the moral high ground. They will not be moved.
But they have sunk so low
in despair and desolation that even a bone unearthed in a mass grave
raises spirits -- maybe something tangible from a loved one, something
to cling to, a hint that truth and justice may not escape them.
'Butcher of Bosnia' shows no remorse
Almost 1,000 miles away,
most of Bosnia goes about its business with little talk of the war; life
goes on. If a question is unwittingly asked by an outsider, it is met
with grace, but it hangs awkwardly over the conversation, like an
unwanted guest at a dinner table everyone would rather not be there.
So back here, in a
courtroom in the Netherlands, it is the women of Srebrenica who have the
moral weight to slug it out. Eight thousand murders in Srebrenica
alone. This is what gives their families such power: There are so many
of them.
They've become a force
Mladic must reckon with, by proxy of course. The international
community, in the form of the International Criminal Tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia (ICTY), controls this courtroom battlefield. They are
such a force, in fact, that the whole country must listen, too, awkward
or not. No amount of reconciliation -- not that there is a lot -- can
really happen until the women of Srebrenica and their families get the
justice they are looking for.
Can their moral high
ground be shared with other Bosnians? Can the country untether itself
from the weight of this anchor on progress? If so, then a bigger battle
will have been won in the Hague.
Will a guilty verdict in
the battle still playing out in the courtroom here be enough to win --
Mladic vanquished to jail, banished from the battlefield by a long
sentence?
If not, then no prison
sentence will bring back the dead, rectify the wrongs, and Bosnians
hopeful of a better future will be hostage to their history and to those
who more than anyone deserve a better future, the families of
Srebrenica.
No comments:
Post a Comment